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Seguridad Wi-Fi
Obtenga más información sobre las características de seguridad integradas que ofrece nuestra gama de Wi-Fi, como la validación WPA3 y FIPS, que hacen posible la implementación de las medidas de seguridad deseadas para las aplicaciones que se conectan a la nube.
Connect: WPA3 Wi-Fi® security
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Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Connect series. My name is Adrian Fernandez. And today, Nick won't be joining us today, but that's OK because we have Saurabh from our Wi-Fi team to talk a little bit about the next generation of Wi-Fi security. I know a lot of developers have security top of mind, so I'm really excited to have you on the show here, Saurabh, today, so welcome.
Thanks, Adrian.
Yep, of course. So let's jump right into it. WPA3, that's the next generation of Wi-Fi security. Do you mind giving a quick introduction as to what that is?
Sure. WPA3 is the next-generation Wi-Fi security. WPA stands for Wi-Fi Protected Access, and 3 is the latest iteration. It is essentially replacing the current Wi-Fi security standard, which is WPA2.
OK, very cool. And for those that maybe aren't familiar, can you walk through some of the differences, the enhancements that WPA3 introduces over the previous iteration?
Definitely. WPA3 is built on widespread adoption and success of WPA2. What it does is it introduces new features and also removes the outdated legacy protocols.
I'll give you an example. WPA2 uses pre-shared key mechanism to derive security keys. Now, what WPA 3 does is it drops pre-shared key mechanism and it introduces SAE, which is Simultaneous Authentication of Equals. SAE is a much more secure protocol compared to the pre-shared key. There are many other features that were introduced in WPA3, essentially making it a much more robust and secure protocol.
Oh, wow. So this is actually a pretty big deal. So, for developers, you know, looking for the most secure application, WPA3 certainly sounds like it makes a lot of sense. Could you walk through maybe some of the different modes that WPA3 supports?
Yes. WPA3 supports personal and enterprise. An example of a personal Wi-Fi network would be a Wi-Fi network at your house where you have an access point and you have certain devices-- your laptop or tablet-- that connect to the AP. Wi-Fi Alliance is responsible for the WPA3 standard and they put a lot of optimizations in WPA3-Personal. For example, the SAE protocol that I mentioned is part of WPA3-Personal.
And then there is enterprise. Enterprise networks involve a RADIUS server, so you have to have a server that authenticates a device before it connects to the AP. These kind of installations you would see at government offices, TI office, as well. So WPA3 supports both personal and enterprise.
OK, great, great. And as developers start to adopt this new generation of security, will there be some backwards compatibility? Could WPA3-enabled products still connect to a WPA2-enabled access point?
Absolutely. WPA3 retains interoperability with legacy WPA2 devices.
OK, awesome. Cool. I'm sold. It sounds like WPA3 makes a lot of sense for security-centric developers. What are some of the TI devices that support or will support WPA3?
So TI offers two families of Wi-Fi devices, SimpleLink and WiLink. SimpleLink devices are more suitable for IoT applications demanding low power consumption. They support internal and external MCUs. And then there's WiLink 8 which supports higher throughput and is more suitable for applications running Linux and requiring more features. TI will have both SimpleLink and WiLink 8 support for WPA3.
OK, cool. And was there anything TI had to do to enable these devices to be WPA3 compatible? And also, was there some certification process in place here to make that happen?
Yeah, that's a good question because TI invested a lot of effort and time to stay ahead of the curve and support WPA3 on both SimpleLink and WiLink 8. I'll give you an example. For WiLink 8, we had to update to subconversion 209, make modifications to our driver, to our firmware. Similar changes were made for SimpleLink. So a lot of effort went into supporting WPA3 on these two families of devices.
Now, TI has internal labs, so we do pre-certification, WPA3 pre-certification on both products. Also, we plan to certify SimpleLink in an external lab in quarter three and quarter four.
OK, awesome. So that's coming very soon. And will developers be able to reuse that WPA3 certification?
Customers can reuse the certification. For WiLink 8, we will pre-certify an internal app. Since it requires an external host, customers will have to take the product to an external lab and certify it. But they can be sure, since we are pre-certifying WiLink 8, it's meeting the WPA3 requirements.
Oh, that's awesome. I know that's a big deal for developers, you know, in terms of getting to market more quickly, you know, being able to trust that these devices will pass from a certification perspective, so that's awesome. Well, Saurabh, I learned a lot. I appreciate you hanging out with us here today. And I'm sure the viewers here at home or in the office, wherever they may be, have learned a lot here, too. So thank you so much for joining us today.
Thanks, Adrian.
Of course. And for those at home, thanks so much for tuning in. Of course, be sure to check in next week as we bring in more connectivity experts from throughout TI. And as always, be sure to tweet at us @SensorToCloud if you have any feedback or recommendations for future topics. And with that, let's all be safe and hang in there. We thank you so much for watching.
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